December 24, 2019 (Originally posted on Blogger)
Star Wars Episode 9 Talk Thing (Totally Spoilers)
Time to talk about the latest divisive movie. No, not that Cats thing. Actually I could say this about most movies now. Anyway, this will have spoilers for Star Wars: Episode 9: Rise Of The Skywalkers or whatever it's called, so don't click through this post unless you've seen the movie or have no plans at all to see it ever and also don't care about spoilers.
Once again, spoilers for Star Wars 9 eventually below. I'm going to put a picture of a robot here, then more scrolling, then the actual post.
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After this line will be the post.
Again, this is a bit of a weird movie, but there's a lot riding on this since it's supposed to wrap up another trilogy, so people might have high expectations. I didn't really come in with much except wondering how they were going to handle the character of Leia as well as if other characters would meet their demise in some battle scene.
I wasn't sure what was going on with Carrie Fisher's appearance at first, where it seemed like she was both in the movie but also not, and as it turns out, they used previous unused footage all the way back from Star Wars 7 and spliced it in to fit. There are also several scenes that use a faceless double, or the brief return appearance of CGI young Leia, in addition to a CGI young Luke for the same brief time. Generally it is easy to tell what footage wasn't her, but it's not that distracting. Using footage of someone deceased in a new work, in a way to try to put them into a role instead of some kind of documentary with historical footage, is an ongoing and even concerning subject regardless of what it is being made, whether it's a movie even as far back as Plan 9 From Outer Space where Bela Lugosi posthumously shared a part with someone else who kept covering his face, or some modern rap song starring one or more artists who have passed, even very recently.
Several previous actors still return in this movie as well, including the original Lando Calrissian played by Billy Dee Williams, and he still works well in the movie with Chewie. The young Lando Calrissian played by Donald Glover in Solo does not appear as a Force ghost alongside Bigger Luke and the two Death Stars, (un)fortunately.
As far as marketable characters in the sequel trilogy, Captain Plasma what's-her-role doesn't show up from what I could tell, but there is a brief appearance by the Porgs. As far as robots, the new robot shows up much more than 5 seconds and sort of plays a minor role in the story as well. It's called D-0. Which, yes, is pronounced Dio. So now we have Jojo meme potential. Of course BB-8 is there, BB-8 is generally always there. R2 takes a backseat for most of the movie but does sit in some kind of X-wing eventually. This time there's not a bunch of BB droids rolling around though.
However, there was some mention about Rey's lightsaber, and that appears briefly. That's going to be marketed to some smaller degree, about as much as lightsabers tend to be usually. But it was somehow a big enough deal to mention.
The weird Force powers shown in the previous movie get more use in this movie, which is something I was wondering about as well, if they would start having this happen around more key plot points. Now there's even transferring objects, yet they can't bring people all the way to one destination, so it's getting really weird.
They go to several planets this time, one is holding some kind of color festival, and another I swear is literally just taking a set of 1940s occupied France and adding space doors and chimneys. It's not a random detour from the plot this time, rather it's more of a path to try to track down important stuff. Also more characters getting introduced along the way, including someone that the hotshot pilot has a history with as well as a tiny pocket creature that knows how to possess robots with the space devil briefly.
As it went with the Legends, a certain boss character comes back somehow for the definitely final boss battle while also wielding some kind of gigantic ultra-nuclear fleet that was just hiding somewhere, becoming a major plot point. Suddenly thousands of ships have Death Star guns. Not to the reality-bending point of the planet weapon in Star Wars 7, just a gun that explodes planets without that shockwave effect. A lot more effective and a lot less anime. It's all about UNLIMITED POWER. Especially when said character ends up becoming a superweapon that can hit every single good guy ship like an aimbot for a brief time. The final clash between Jedi and Sith ends up being some kind of anime thing but without standing around charging for six episodes, though in a way it did take a few episodes to charge fully, since these movies are called episodes. This was a dumb joke I was trying to make.
Ben Swolo doesn't show up, but Kylo Ren's mask is all cracked and held together with red glue or what would supposedly be weld marks, and he's actually somehow self-conscious about it, which comes up in one of those evil table meetings briefly as the other people are just all like "no this looks fine" and such. He also just drops an alien head on the table for no real reason I could tell while talking about something unrelated. He seems like a confused bad guy overall, which sort of ends up making sense but is still weird. Generally still an angsty teenager type of person. This crazy new Empire thing is run with a bunch of teens trying to figure it out while the old folks really run things behind them. Including that one redhead guy who people were fawning over in the previous movie, the same guy who that hotshot pilot was telling "yo mama" jokes to in the last movie, who turns out to be something else in his role.
Rey and Ben have sort of a thing as if siblings disagreeing rather than estranged lovers, which made something in the ending seem weird. Also made something in the previous movie seem weird, such as "walking in" on Ben Swolo. Even so that was weird anyway, like a lot of that movie. Of course something else was at play there, so this time the semi-frequent projection whatever things he can be dressed up for.
The movie is about normal movie length now I guess, shorter than Endgame so I felt able to see it in the theater, and it was okay. It did seem like it was cramming a lot of plot in the first two thirds or so, but learned to relax eventually during the most intense third, weirdly enough. I don't think it'd be the best or worst movie either. But people are warming up to the prequel trilogy more, maybe not even ironically. After this, I guess I'm done with new Star Wars stuff for now, despite the streaming TV shows and the video games, all of which cost money I'm needing for other things at the moment, but I might go watch Solo for the fun of how weird it probably gets. I'm not sure if that "I'm Han Solo" song is in the soundtrack for that movie but it should be. One of these days I'm going to boot up Kinect Star Wars, the best Star Wars dance game probably.